The present inventive concepts relate to semiconductor devices and methods of fabricating the same.
As electronic devices trend toward high speed and low power consumption, semiconductor memory devices incorporated therein may be configured to be associated with high-speed read/write operations and low operating voltages. Magnetic memory devices have been considered as memory devices to enable such configurations. As magnetic memory devices can operate at high speed and have nonvolatile characteristics, magnetic memory devices have attracted considerable attention as the next generation of memory devices.
A magnetic memory device may include a magnetic tunnel junction (MTJ) pattern. Two magnetic structures and an insulation layer interposed therebetween may form the magnetic tunnel junction pattern, whose resistance (“electrical resistance”) may be changed depending on magnetization directions of the two magnetic structures. For example, the magnetic tunnel junction pattern may have high resistance when the two magnetic structures have anti-parallel magnetization directions and low resistance when the two magnetic structures have parallel magnetization directions. The magnetic memory device may write/read data using the above-mentioned difference in resistance of the magnetic tunnel junction pattern.